--- title: Unveiling The Grid: PCBs made in America, twice as fast... description: CircuitHub unveiled The Grid, a factory-scale robot in Massachusetts that builds circuit boards on demand without per-design changeovers. Levitating movers... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/unveiling-the-grid-pcbs-made-in-america-twice-as-fast-as-shenzhen-zsch75wj0 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Unveiling The Grid: PCBs made in America, twice as fast as Shenzhen | daily.dev og:description: CircuitHub unveiled The Grid, a factory-scale robot in Massachusetts that builds circuit boards on demand without per-design changeovers. Levitating movers... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/unveiling-the-grid-pcbs-made-in-america-twice-as-fast-as-shenzhen-zsch75wj0 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ZScH75Wj0.png og:image:alt: Unveiling The Grid: PCBs made in America, twice as fast as Shenzhen og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Unveiling The Grid: PCBs made in America, twice as fast as Shenzhen **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 4 min read · 3 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary CircuitHub unveiled The Grid, a factory-scale robot in Massachusetts that builds circuit boards on demand without per-design changeovers. Levitating movers carry each board between machines that print solder paste, place parts, reflow, solder and inspect, scheduled by learned models and AI agents. On a sample 4-layer motor controller with 118 parts, The Grid delivers five boards in 4 days for $630, versus about $465 and 9 days from a typical Shenzhen quick-turn shop including tariffs. The Grid has been running for customers for five years, already builds tens of millions of dollars of electronics a year, and CircuitHub has shipped over 2.2 million boards for more than 26,000 engineers. Capacity will grow 5x this year. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How much faster is CircuitHub's The Grid compared to a Shenzhen quick-turn PCB shop? For a 4-layer motor controller with 118 parts (38 unique) and five assembled boards, The Grid delivers in 4 days for $630, while a typical Shenzhen quick-turn shop takes 9 days at the median and costs about $465 once shipping and US tariffs are included. That's roughly $165 more to save about five days, with no customs involved. _Teams weighing domestic versus overseas PCB sourcing can track manufacturing trade-offs like these on daily.dev._ ### What is CircuitHub's The Grid and how does it manufacture circuit boards? The Grid is a factory-scale robot in Massachusetts where levitating movers carry each board and its parts between machines that print solder paste, place parts, reflow, solder and inspect. Learned models, AI agents and classic optimizers schedule the work, so there are no changeovers or per-design setup, letting one unit of 100 different designs run as easily as 100 units of one design. _Engineers exploring automated hardware manufacturing can follow developments like this on daily.dev._ ### How much electronics manufacturing has CircuitHub shipped so far? CircuitHub has shipped more than 2.2 million boards, placed more than 150 million parts, and served more than 26,000 engineers. The Grid itself has been running for customers for five years and already builds tens of millions of dollars of electronics annually, with plans to increase capacity fivefold this year. _Hardware teams sizing up manufacturing partners can keep tabs on scale metrics like these via daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 147 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-28). **TL;DR:** Commenters are enthusiastic about a domestic PCB manufacturing option and welcomed the founder's active Q&A, but many pushed back hard on pricing versus Shenzhen/JLCPCB, onboarding friction (forced account creation, gerber upload errors), IP/legal terms, and skepticism about the claimed speed benchmarks. **Sentiment:** 25% positive · 45% mixed · 30% skeptical **The case for** - Domestic manufacturing with faster turnaround is seen as valuable for prototyping where speed matters more than cost. - Several users reported good hands-on experience with quick turnaround and no tariff hassle. - The founder's direct, transparent engagement in the thread was well received. **The pushback** - Pricing is still seen as far too high compared to Shenzhen/JLCPCB/OSHPark for many use cases, even accounting for tariffs. - Signup requires creating an account and uploading full source files before even getting a quote, which many found frictional. - Some couldn't get standard Gerber/KiCad exports to upload successfully. - Legal terms around IP protection for uploaded source files were seen as weak/unfavorable to customers. - Skepticism that the claimed 2x speed advantage over Shenzhen is backed by solid, apples-to-apples benchmarking. - Components themselves still largely originate from China, undermining the 'reliable domestic supply chain' pitch. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Genuine interest in a US PCB manufacturing alternative is tempered by strong pushback on price, UX friction, IP terms, and doubts about the benchmark claims, with a long tangential debate on wages/tariffs/politics branching off. **Hottest debate:** Whether The Grid's pricing and claimed speed advantage genuinely compete with Shenzhen quick-turn shops like JLCPCB, or whether the comparison is misleading. **Open questions** - Can pricing come down to be competitive with Chinese manufacturers outside the narrow 'Grid Proto' spec? - Will the gerber upload and account-creation friction be fixed? - How exactly does the automated changeover process achieve claimed time savings over existing Shenzhen lines? - Will IP/legal terms be improved to better protect uploaded source designs? **Highlights** > I've done a lot of PCBA sourcing from Shenzhen so I have domain knowledge here. The main latency for this is typically sourcing. The partners I've worked with will get PCBA done within a day or two once they have parts. The claims here about a breakthrough in setup time also don't really fit with my experience. What is this, putting a new stencil in, adding different components to a hopper? I've toured PCBA factories and it's not like their lines are typically down for set-up. I think this takes like 30min? Also, it doesn't look like they substantiate their 2x speed claims? They "benchmarked" this, but with what suppliers? Their claims would make sense if they found random suppliers, not exactly specialized in rapid prototype style PCBA, so they're not comparing like to like. Don't get me wrong, I really want this to happen too, but the desire for this to happen seems to be making the community gullible. I'd love the founders or someone with circuithub to link to real benchmark evidence and explain why their changeover procedure can produce several days of difference. > — [seizethecheese on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276864) > Pretty strict board requirements. They give an example motor controller, but then require your board to be 1oz copper. Motor controllers in particular often use 2oz for high current. No buried vias is an interesting requirement too. I'm not sure how often our guys use them but dense designs probably need them. Still, looks super cool and I don't think the price difference is very high for a company doing prototypes. > — [phkahler on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273213) > I'd highly recommend you revisit your protection of customer's IP. Considering that you require source files (not just the industry standard gerbers), your legal terms are very unfavorable to customers. This makes me uncomfortable because it makes my IP much easier to leak. As written, I cannot justify the risks given your agreement. Nothing in the legal terms explicitly prevents your employees from using my designs for other purposes. If you leak my IP and I find out 13 months later, your terms prevent me from seeking damages because you only cover 12 months from manufacturing. I like that you have an NDA that I can opt in to, but you should be offering the NDA by default when I upload the files. I should not have to go looking for it in your documentation. > — [kevin42 on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50275204) > I'd love to see you successful, so wanted to comment: The app feels very vibe-coded, and gives impression it's not well tested and polished for a new user/project. I appreciate PCBs aren't the usual the consumer-level type of user, but I felt confused by a lot compared to JLCPCB. Hope that helps. > — [gedy on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273123) > I do a fair bit of electronics manufacturing and excited to see this pop up. However I have my reservations because China is incredibly cheap, incredibly fast, and incredibly skilled. Our domestic made boards tend to be lower quality with more mistakes than Chinese made ones (while also costing up to 50x more). I'll run some designs through this later, and I really hope it is broadly viable (not just unique niches that fit their tooling) > — [WarmWash on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273878) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50243060) · 290 points · 147 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [CircuitHub takes $28m from Plural to make PCBs the way clouds make compute](https://daily.dev/posts/circuithub-takes-28m-from-plural-to-make-pcbs-the-way-clouds-make-compute-n4716ntai) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [ProvenMetal. Fast circuit boards. Built in America.](https://daily.dev/posts/provenmetal-fast-circuit-boards-built-in-america--mcskt4tj9) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [New Tool Makes 3D Printed PCBs, Fast](https://daily.dev/posts/new-tool-makes-3d-printed-pcbs-fast-t4syadhrh) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [PewCB One Desktop PCB fabrication system enables rapid prototyping at home](https://daily.dev/posts/pewcb-one-desktop-pcb-fabrication-system-enables-rapid-prototyping-at-home-lqu3s1mtm) · CNX Software · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#hardware](https://daily.dev/tags/hardware), [#automation](https://daily.dev/tags/automation), [#robotics](https://daily.dev/tags/robotics), [#supply-chain](https://daily.dev/tags/supply-chain) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/unveiling-the-grid-pcbs-made-in-america-twice-as-fast-as-shenzhen-zsch75wj0) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Unveiling The Grid: PCBs made in America, twice as fast as Shenzhen","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/unveiling-the-grid-pcbs-made-in-america-twice-as-fast-as-shenzhen-zsch75wj0","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/unveiling-the-grid-pcbs-made-in-america-twice-as-fast-as-shenzhen-zsch75wj0"},"datePublished":"2026-10-28T14:39:42.241Z","dateModified":"2026-10-28T19:08:57.926Z","description":"CircuitHub unveiled The Grid, a factory-scale robot in Massachusetts that builds circuit boards on demand without per-design changeovers. 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